Fred's pre-debate festivities

From NBC/NJ's Adam Aigner-TreworgyHere at the Capitol City Brewing Co. in Arlington, VA about 20 Fred-heads have gathered as part of the Young Professionals for Fred Thompson debate watching party. The campaign just held a pre-debate conference call featuring Thompson Political Director Randy Enwright, John Rich from the country music group Big & Rich, Jeri Thompson, and the director of the group's new web-based Phone for Fred program Graham Shafer. The campaign will also be live-blogging the debate on its Web site and holding surrogate-hosted online conference calls with supporters during commercial breaks to update watchers on how the debate is going.

The campaign is using the debate tonight to unveil it's new internet phone banking program, which allows supporters to sign onto the campaign's Web site, download a list of phone numbers of voters in key early states like Iowa, South Carolina or New Hampshire, a script on what to say to them and what questions to ask to determine which issues are important to those voters and then volunteers can make calls from anywhere in the country in support of Thompson. The volunteers can enter in data about the calls online to be sent directly back to the campaign's headquarters, or they can fill out forms to send in later.